Barbra Brady

I first met Barbra nearly 2 years ago in LA where we were both attending a Yoga Sutra training given by Rod Stryker. We kept in touch, and when I was looking for a manager for the studio last year, I thought immediately of her. A phone call to Barbra in Montana, a visit to explore the beauty and offerings of Sonoma and Napa, and before I knew it she had decided to make a life-altering move here to Sonoma.

For Barbra yoga is not just about feeling good physically, though that is important to her as evidenced by her love of cycling and swimming (she just completed her first Century bike ride!). As you can read below in her interview with fellow instructor Mark Dennis, yoga has been a life-changing, and in some ways life-saving, practice for her, and it is that aspect of yoga that fuels her classes. As she eloquently guides you inward through not just asana, but also pranayama, visualization, and meditation, her enthusiasm and love for yoga and how it can alter all aspects of your life are infectious.
-Carol

MD: Why do you do yoga?

BB: When I was 18, my family moved across the country. I didn't know anyone. I went from having a close circle of really cool friends in high-school, to not knowing a soul. I felt lost. So I watched a lot of tv. That's where I discovered "Lilias, Yoga and You." It was this one little 30 minute window every night where I felt good about myself. The other 23-1/2 hours I was unhappy, but when Lilias came on with yoga-looking right into the camera at me, I felt good. I thought, Wow, this is it. She likes me. (I know I look like Sally Field, well, I sometimes feel like her, too!)

MD: Can you identify what it was about yoga that made you feel good about yourself?

BB: Lilias [Folan] was like the quintessential fairy godmother, kind and reassuring. On the days that felt the darkest, I knew Lilias, and yoga, would be there for me. All the depressing thoughts would quiet. It was a place of unconditional acceptance.

MD: Where did this happen? What where the circumstances in your life?

BB: Texarkana, Texas. I'd never had a mentor whatsoever, so there I was, fresh out of high-school, from a college-going family, and no one had ever asked me where I wanted to go to college, or what I wanted to be when I grew up.

MD: In Texarkana, TX, you couldn't find a yoga class [in 1972]. I'm astounded.
When was your first "live" teacher, how did that happen?

BB: Again, it was right after I'd made a big move in my life. It was almost 12 years ago, I had just moved from Greensboro, North Carolina to Missoula, Montana for a job as the curator at the art museum. Now that I think about it, it was a very similar transition. I left everyone and everything I knew behind to move to a place about as remote and different as it could be. Right away, I felt like the new job, and new town were completely the wrong fit. I felt like I had broken my own heart.

I was so miserable, I'd cry first thing in the morning getting ready to go to work. It was a harsh change, moving to Montana in the middle of winter. Of course I later grew to love it intensely, which is a yoga lesson in itself, but at the time, once again, everything around me felt wrong. Except when I went to the health club, where I went to my first "live" yoga class.

So I went to the yoga classes, and once again, I felt accepted and celebrated.
Mark, I'm having a yogic Aha moment. I've had many times and situations in my entire life where I felt like I didn't fit in...

MD: So yoga saved your life twice now. Who was your teacher?

BB: Her name is Mary Kahn. The moment I walked in her class, I felt the same unconditional acceptance. I was teased a lot as a child, it was such a relief to be able to depend on not feeling that way. This is beginning to sound like a pattern, isn't it? I'm relieved to say, my own yoga practice with Rod Stryker has given me a bigger and steadier world view!

MD: Tell me about your transition from student to teacher.

BB: It was 1998. I quit the job without a plan. I had a few freelance curating and writing jobs, including writing for an encyclopedia! I was going to four yoga classes a week. I was very dedicated to it, I planned my life around it. I made some wonderful friends. One day Mary asked me if I would lead the class out of Savasana, she wanted to slip out early for a concert. I was terrified, but thrilled. Not long after, she asked me to sub a whole class.

MD: What advice did she give you?

BB: To trust that I knew what to do. A few months later, she suggested we meet for ice cream one summer night. We were walking along the Clark Fork River, downtown, Missoula, and a wild lightning storm came up. Dramatic background for her news. She was moving away. She said, "You're my best student, you're the only one I can imagine taking over my classes." It was one of the biggest moments of my life. With real lightning bolts, no less!

I felt a responsibility to seek teacher training, even though this was in a health club that would have been perfectly satisfied to hire me without any training.

MD: You were trained. Even though it wasn't formal training, you studied under a teacher. The way it happened for thousands of years. You do it and you do it and then your teacher says, "Grasshopper, you may leave the temple." It's time to start.
Now tell me about your formal training.

BB: When I do something, I want to do it well...

MD: I get that about you.

BB: At first, I did a 200-hour teacher training in Bozeman, MT.

MD: What style?

BB: Yoga Motion. It was a combination of Ashtanga, Iyengar and Vini yoga. The teacher, Nancy Ruby, had a super understanding of adapting for people's different learning styles.

MD: And then?

BB: One of the books on the required reading list was Erich Schiffmann's Moving Into Stillness. That book sent me. One day, out of the blue, a friend called to tell me she was going to Portland, OR, for an Advanced Teacher Training with Erich. I loved him, but thought I couldn't "afford" to go for this dream of being in the presence of such a "famous" teacher...but, it was one of those Nothing can stop me moments...so that was my second certification. I am still inspired by him.

MD: What style does he teach?

BB: "Freedom Style." That's what I love about Erich, he encourages you to do your own yoga the way that feels right to you, the way that "lures you to your most willingness." Confession: I've always been resistant to being told what to do, so some other styles of yoga weren't the right fit for me. I've never been good with authority figures.

MD: So you studied with Erich..

BB: And after that, I was teaching and practicing in his style...then I did a teacher training with David Life, Jivamukti.

MD: Vigorous practice, right?

BB: It is. And it was a turning point. I realized at that point of my life, that was not a fit. I was still traveling, and seeking, and often felt like the crew in The Wizard of Oz, when they thought they had fulfilled all the tasks, but were once again sent back out for the witch's broom, they had not made it yet.

MD: It was a quest, classic quest. It's a quest that led you to your true teacher, Rod Stryker. What was it about Rod that told you your quest for a teacher was over?

BB: From the first moment I heard Rod speak, his depth of scholarship was clear, his knowledge of the scriptures, the ancient teachings, Sanskrit, amazing practices of pranayama (breathing) and the energetics of yoga. His teachings are so accessible, calm, and assured. He is a scholar, I'd always considered myself a serious academic.

MD: What did you study in college?

BB: Liberal studies. In college it was literature, art history and theatre. My master's degree is in Liberal Studies with a focus in religious studies and critical theory in museum exhibitions. I was all about the life of the mind for decades. I knew I was clever, and I had hovered around intellectual friends, but it was all about that clever mind.

MD: How did that love of the intellectual intersect with yoga and influence your teaching style?

BB: Those two great loves, intellectual studies and yoga, had been separate. Rod brings both of those seamlessly together--within the body of the practice! Two of my pursuits in life perfectly merged by Rod, and Tantric Hatha Yoga.

MD: You incorporate pranayama in all your classes. How does pranayama work in moving energy?

BB: It's key. Rod teaches that a personal practice should be a little asana, then pranayama and then meditation, in that order. Asana to prepare the body to be an open conduit for the energy/prana to be moved by pranayama and meditation. Tantric Hatha yoga incorporates many pranayama techniques to balance energy-it can be either energizing or calming, depending on the needs of the individual. It's very visual internally, watching the breath move to the areas in the body and mind that need that particular quality of energy.

Also, Tantra uses pranayama and mediation as "counterposes" to asana. If I'm teaching an invigorating back bend practice, especially in the evening, then I make sure that when I lead them out of Savasana, I lead them through a pranayama and mediation that are both cooling, and vice-versa. If it was a calming asana practice such as forward folds, I will counter that at the end with a pranayama and meditation that are more awakening. It's one thing to help people calm down and relax, but then there are techniques to replenish prana, or energy, once you've established a centered "baseline."

MD: That sounds like a unique aspect of your teaching, and a cool one.

BB: It's alchemy! When you combine concentrating on where you are moving the breath and energy while in specific asanas, you can get as much effect in 20 minutes as you can in 90 minutes of asana that doesn't evoke that level of concentration.

MD: What do you want for your students when you are teaching?

BB: To help people move toward a calm mind and balanced energy--to find stability in a world that is always changing around us. Developing that capacity to feel good about themselves, and life, no matter what the social circumstances are.
To share exactly what yoga has given me.